So, we’re back in Blighty. Just spent that last 4 days tagging and titling all our photos on Flickr. I’m not going to tell you how many photos are on there, but from that 4 day time frame, you might presume there’s a lot; and you would be right. Please go have a peek. We’ve added some handy short cuts to help you find just the bit you’re looking for, so you really don’t have any excuse not to look. Still here? Go look already!
We’ve made it to Los Angeles! Here’s Boob relaxing with a decent cuppa rosie in our frightfully swanky hotel in Santa Monica (ok it’s a glass, out hotel didn’t supply us with any mugs, and we had to buy a kettle in an outlet mall). The plan was to get here and relax for a week before we fly home. Of course relaxing is something we don’t do very well. So far we’ve managed to cram in a whirl wind visit to Universal Studios, and a marathon 16 hours adventure around Disney Land. I love Disney Land, where else can you see a mouse spray 12 feet of fire from each hand, then take down a 60 foot dragon with all the fire and the burninating? Tomorrow we hit 6 Flags. There’s a good chance it will kill us, but that’s all part of the game.
After driving through 17 states, and interviewing 15 people, it was time to let off some steam. And how better to do that than spend a few nights in Las Vegas and firing off 5 different types of machine gun? We also saw a comedy pet show featuring a dog that sits on a 10 foot high platform being balanced on a man’s head while catching balls being thrown to him from the man… it went on from there, it was of course a mind expanding experience.
Meet Leonard Knight. He’s the proud creator of Salvation Mountain; just outside Niland, California. A hard man to tie down as he lives in the foothills of his hand made mountain with no phone. Leonard was no-where to be seen when we arrived in the 116 degrees heat, so we poked around for a bit taking several hundred photos and tons of b-roll footage. Just as we were about to head back into Niland to find the guy, a car covered in paint and putty pulled up. Out leapt a very excited and joyous 87 year old Leonard. We spoke with him for some time about his faith and how he built his 50 foot high message from god. A truly inspiring man, and a pleasure to meet him. We picked up a few buckets of paint and putty for him em route in Yuma, which he seemed to love.
Yes, it is very odd grammar that tittle, but that’s what the place is called. Here’s Eric. A dutch fella that settled in the USA when he was 8 years old. He now owns The Hole N” The Rock in Moab, Utah. The Hole is actually an entire 14 room house that Albert and Gladys Christensen blasted and dug out of a huge rock back in the 50s. Complete with a fireplace, deep fat fryer (essential) and very alarming looking taxidermy horses. Eric now runs the place with his wife and son. A really nice funny chap. At the end of the interviewed he asked us “have you ever seen a 1000 bowling balls?”. He showed us his cache of balls, and told us of his idea to sculpt them into a giant cactus. Should certainly compliment his amazing collection of sculptures and old neon signs.
Here we are Alliance, Nebraska at the wonderful Car Henge. It’s a henge made of cars with the best advice coming from the merger announcement, simple as that. Had a steak in a nice little restaurant in Alliance. Asked the guy serving us what there is to do in Alliance; he just said “no” and shook his head. The town’s main purpose seems to be a junction for the freight trains full of coal and other stuffs. A milestone has been smashed, we’ve just leapt over the 3000 miles marker and the 3000 photos marker. The video camera is also full, so we have to back everything up and wipe the camera, a bit scary.
Thought I’d mention today about some of the obstacles the lord has chosen to fling in our path. The glorious image above is a screen grab from our camera. As you can tell, it’s poorly. The trippy effect seemed to come and go in a seemingly random fashion. We tried keeping it at a constant temperature, and it seemed to help it. Until it finally just decided to not turn on at all and go play with all the top loading VHS decks in the big Dixons in the sky. We have since bought a standby camera. It’s a top of the line consumer camera from Sony. Shockingly good picture, and we’ve made a Frankenstein converter for our pro mic. What else has gone wrong… ah yes, after searching behind a wrecker’s yard and an army ammo factory and opening up various chained gates labelled “DO NOT TRESPASS” we found Dr Evermore’s Forevertron. Only to discover it was chained up (with padlocks) and no sign of the good Doctor. It’s not all bad though. We’ve rearranged to meet Dr Evermore this morning and spent yesterday getting the crapped knocked out of us on terribly built huge roller coasters, and bombing around the Wisconsin Dells in a huge jet boat.
Found ourselves in a scary place deep in Indiana. The image above, left is taken from inside a tomb in the grounds of a Carmelite Monastery. They happened to be having some kind of big to do, and the place was full of Polish people chanting and generally being scary. These were not our people. THEN we found ourselves in Ella’s Deli in Wisconsin (above, right). An amazing place full of animatronic toys and stuff having from the ceiling and embedded in our table. The food was giant, as was the welcome from Ken and Katie who we chatted to for ages about the amazing place.
Here’s Joe. The Head Knight of the Knights of The Golden Trail. He runs the Chateau Laroche just outside Cincinnati in Loveland, Ohio. He inherited it from Harry Andrews when he died about 25 years ago. He and his knights keep the Chateau all ship shape and Bristol fashion for visitors to come and just hang out. The Knights are kinda like a grown up group of boy scouts, that have a frikkin castle to play in. Really nice bunch of chaps, and Joe was just super. We also stumbled over Kings Island and got horribly beaten up on some of the best coaster we’ve ever ridden.
Another little test of the time-lapse controller. This time The Boob took us on a whirlwind tour from Collier Row, to Hainault then Romford and home. The dog track was kicking out in Romford, some slow traffic made for some good still moments in the time-lapse. Oh yeah, we were on a 3 seater speeder bike.
